The Cultural Legacies Of Chinese Schools In Singapore And Malaysia

This edited volume examines the historical development of Chinese-medium schools from the British colonial era to recent decades of divergent development after the 1965 separation of Singapore and Malaysia. Educational institutions have been a crucial state apparatus in shaping the cultural identity and ideology of ethnic Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia. This volume applies various perspectives from education theory to heritage studies in dealing with the cultural legacy and memory of such schools as situated in larger contexts of society. The book offers comprehensive practice-based analysis and reflection about the complex relationships between language acquisition, identity construction, and state formation from socio-political-cultural perspectives. It covers a broad range of aspects from identities of culture, gender, and religion, to the roles played by the state and the community in various aspects of education such as textbooks, cultural activities, and adult education, as well as the representation of culture in Chinese schools through cultural memory and literature. The readership includes academics, students and members of the public interested in the history and society of the Chinese diaspora, especially in South East Asia. This also appeals to scholars interested in a bilingual or multilingual outlook in education as well as diasporic studies.

The history of modern Chinese schools in Peninsular Malaysia is a story of conflicts between Chinese domiciled there and different governments that happened or happen to rule the land. Before the days of the Pacific War, the British found the Chinese schools troublesome because of their pro-China political activities. They established measures to control them. When the Japanese ruled the Malay Peninsula, they closed down all the Chinese schools. After the Pacific War, for a decade, the British sought to convert the Chinese schools into English schools. The Chinese schools decoupled themselves from China and survived. A Malay-dominated government of independent Peninsular Malaysia allowed Chinese primary schools to continue, but finally changed many Chinese secondary schools into National Type Secondary Schools using Malay as the main medium of instruction. Those that remained independent, along with Chinese colleges, continued without government assistance. The Chinese community today continues to safeguard its educational institutions to ensure they survive.

The nineteen articles in this volume examine the ethnic Chinese in Singapore, presenting a fascinating cross-country comparison between the past and the present. While some issues address the issues of tradition and modernity, others trace the process of change, especially economic, social and cultural change in terms of ethnic Chinese society, politics, identity, business and literature in these two countries.

This book is a case study of policy translation at an elite Japanese university. Through an analysis of the implementation of government-funded reform policies, Black investigates the role of the university in society, the youth-to-work transition, and systems of organisational management operative at the university. Black was present throughout the initial adoption phase of the Super Global project, a policy project implemented at an elite Japanese university, the University of Tsukuba. Aligned with a basic critical realist perspective, the different components of his research are integrated in four levels of analysis: the macro level of policy, the organisation level of the university, the departmental level of the English Section, and the individual level of the student. The analysis and the different sources of data look at internal structures of the organisation and try to understand what the mechanisms of policy translation operative are in the integrated and overlapping complexity of the four levels of analysis. At the core of the research is the objective of understanding why things are as they are. The main theories to emerge from the case study serve to inform the judgements and decisions of practitioners or policy makers in this area. It is a telling case for internationalisation-focused education reform policy in Japan.

Winner of the Comparative and International Education Society’s Globalization and Education SIG Book Award Cambodia for Sale: Everyday Privatization in Education and Beyond details a post-conflict society that socializes children into a world of private rather than public goods. Despite the government's best efforts since the 1990s to re-constitute a functioning system of public services, life remains organized around buying and selling virtually everything, from humanitarian aid to schooling and from religious good deeds to irrigation. Through an ethnography of one village, Cambodia for Sale argues that efforts to rebuild Cambodia after decades of conflict have resulted in various forms of everyday privatization. Although this is most notable in the education system, these practices of privatization can be found in multiple institutions that constitute social life, from the Buddhist pagoda to local government. The various efforts of international development are as much at fault for this reality as are the legacies of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime. This argument unfolds through the life stories of six residents of the Preah Go village, who collectively depict everyday life through overlapping village institutions, systems, and histories. This is an insightful and valuable reference for scholars interested in educational development, Southeast Asian studies, and comparative education.

The first part of the book contains documentation of a groundbreaking exhibition held in 2007 on student activities and societal engagements during post-war Singapore 1945OCo1965 and transcripts of forums held in conjunction with it. The second half centres on oral history accounts of mostly former Chinese school students who shared about their social, cultural and political activities in complex but exciting times.Education-at-large broadens our understanding of Singapore''s educational history in the transitional period between the end of the Second World War and the country''s independence; examines the ways in which student activities and activism resonated with, and contributed to, the country''s wider social, political and cultural life, as well as the decolonisation process; and stimulates debates about Chinese education and student activism in Singapore.